BS 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



EXEGESIS 

(a leading out of perplexities into perception) 



STUDIES 

(Zealous thinking) 



PENTATEUCH 

(Fivefold book) 
OF 

MOSES 



ADDRESSES 



ISAIAH 

(Jah is helper) 



HENRY WHITE WARREN, D.D. 

One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Churchy Author 

of '' The Bible in the World's Education^'* 

^''Recreations in Astronotny^'' etc. 




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NEW YORK : HUNT & EATON 
CINCINNATI : CRANSTON & CURTS 



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To the PENTATEUCH as the earliest record of the first order- 
ing of matter, curiosity ; as the oldest human history, respect; as 
the best unfolding of the highest principles of human rights in 
civil government, annazement; as a revelation of the greatness, 
perfection, and fatherhood of God, reverence ; as the assertor of 
man's derivation from him, necessitating likeness, might of 
heredity, and fitness for future association — gratitude and love ; 
and to it in all respects, thorough study. 



Copyright, 1893, by Hunt & Eaton, New York. 






(? 



CONTENTS. 



THE PENTATEUCH. 

PAGE 

Names 5 

Introduction 5 

Genesis 8 

The Continuous Sense 9 

A Cluster OF Dates 17 

Division into Topics 17 

Method of Exegesis 26 

The Spirit of the Investigator 27 

Parts and Whole 27 

Results 28 

studies in the addresses of isaiah. 

General Ideas 29 

Criticism 31 

Personality 33 

Time of Writing 34 

Sociology _. 34 

Characterization 36 

The Consecutive Sense 36 

Great Passages 38 

Messianic Predictions 38 

Mark Your Bible 39 

The Object of these Prophecies 40 

Analysis of the Book ^ 40 



THE PENTATEUCH. 



Lord, open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law, 

NAMES. 

Genesis. Greek, The book of generations. Hebrew. Bereshith, its 
first word. 

Exodus. Greek. The going out from Egypt. 

Leviticus. Latin. The law concerning Levites. Hebrew, The law of 
the priests, namely, religion. 

Numbers. Latin, The number and ordering of the people. Greek, 
Arithmoi. Hebrew, In the desert. 

Deuteronomy. Greek. The second law, a recapitulation. Hebrew, 
Book of admonitions. 

INTRODUCTION. 

The most general view of these books shows the regula- 
tion and establishment of matter whenever created into deli- 
cately related worlds, the creation of man, his relation to God, 
as a child and as a sinner, and his establishment in families 
and nations. 

I. The most essential ideas regarding creation. 
Space, limitless; time, measureless; and the world in both. 
Matter not eternal, nor its regulation. Force strong enough 
to control worlds by words. Wisdom enough to avoid any 
minute mistake in works most colossal. Light, which had 
always been God's garment, but unperceivable by such 
vision as ours, made by new form and less tension to be mani- 
fest to angelic and mortal eyes. And a Personality so great 
that these infinities are only his thoughts and words. In 
this creative poem the greatest conceivable things are in its 
first words. Literature begins at its highest. 



THE PENTATEUCH. 



2. Six creative days. These words are before all 
etymologies, before all human thought, and must be inter- 
preted by themselves. No science can conflict with them 
without first setting up an interpretation to combat. With 
as good reason as we assume twenty-four hours for a day, 
any possible inhabitants of Jupiter would say ten, and 
of the moon seven hundred and eight. In the account 
there is no hint of a measure of duration. The whole 
six are called one day (ii, 4). It is infinity. The scale is 
altogether different from that subsequently fixed by the 
world's revolution. We say "time," meaning immeasurable 
ages, and we say *^ time," meaning a second. So of the 
day. God's six days of work and one of rest are as different 
as God's work and rest from man's. The Scriptures keep up 
the distinction. Psalm cxiv, 13, speaks of the kingdom of all 
eternities, and Micah v, i, of these *' days of eternity" as 
different from the days of time. We spend all our years 
as one sigh, but God's are from everlasting to everlasting. 
Our whole life is as only one watch of one night compared 
with one of God's days. Put no human limit to God's days. 

3. The reign of law. The first appearance is in Gen. 
i. 16. Then were the ordinances, rules, times, and seasons 
of the heavens and the earth set. They are alluded to in 
twenty places subsequently. All that science has since for- 
mulated was then established. AVhatever is fixed had a fixer 
more stable and mighty than it. Hence the supernatural is 
evidently set forth. Human guesses say, in the beginning 
igneous cloud, world stuff, or force. The Bible says, '* In 
the beginning God." 

4. Whence came such insight and breadth? It was 
revealed. No human singer reaches such lofty strains. They 
are a whole soul gamut above ours. Truthfulness, simplicity, 
sublimity, holiness, shine out of these first pages. 

5. How is so much that is otherwise unknowable 
revealed to man ? AVe cannot be very certain. But it 



THE PENTATEUCH. 



seems that this great apocalypse of the past, as John's of 
the future, was revealed by a series of pictures interpreted 
with voices. Seers have their visions. Prophets hear the 
word of the Lord. The great panorama full of symbolic 
horses, hurled mountains, raining stars, etc., moves, and at 
the close of each section some divine judgment as 'S^ery 
good '* is pronounced. The writer seems to see the man 
formed from the dust, waked into life by a kiss of love, 
God imbreathed into man ; and he also seems to hear God's 
first thought about his child to be made in his image and 
likeness to have dominion, and the instructions that may 
enable him to reach the ineffable height. 

6. Authorship. Thousands of pages have been written on 
this subject, giving half a dozen hypotheses, some of them as 
untenable as that of the Symmes hole, and none establishing 
aught contrary to what appears on the face of the documents 
themselves and what was repeatedly stated by Christ and his 
inspired apostles. This is clear. The Pentateuch does not 
claim to have been all written by Moses. Of course the ac- 
count of his death could not have been. The Book of Gene- 
sis alone covers a period of more than two thousand years. 
Of course there is old tradition, and that which is before 
all tradition, reduced to writing. Second, newer memoranda 
concerning Joseph's going into Egypt and the compacting of 
the tribes into a nation in the four hundred years that fol- 
lowed. Third, the writing by Moses of the events and insti- 
tutions of his own time; and fourth, the prophecies recorded 
in Deuteronomy. It is a unity of historical truth. Each 
creative period is preparatory to the next in an upward 
order. The Jewish religion, that began with the promise to 
Abraham, is consistently carried through all the pages. It 
is the appropriate, necessary foundation of thousands of 
years of Jewish history. Its acceptance as essential truth is 
far more easy than belief in inventions. The canonicity of 
the five books has never been shaken, nor its necessity as a 



8 THE PENT A TE UCH, 

foundation for the civil and ecclesiastical history of thou- 
sands of years. Its reputed author is in every just sense its 
real author. 

7. The style of the Pentateuch is simple, graphic, 
childlike narrative adapted to the earlier ages of our race, 
while in the Apocalypse, that makes the close, there is mystery 
and symbolism that no earthly genius can yet unfold. Time 
is the best commentary on prophecy. But only revelation 
can show what was before time. 

8. The reason why the history of Israel is so 
painstakingly traced and pursued is because this race chiefly 
gave great prominence to permanent and eternal things, 
namely, religion. The Greeks had art, the Romans law, 
and both died. Israel sought to be capable of divine cul- 
ture, was met on that plane by divine aid. Thus the Jews 
employed their highest faculties, and, having the greatest 
help from God, their history is most important and reaches a 
higher plane and is worthiest of preservation. 

9. Hence the main essential element in this history 
is the constant, world-wide, age-long effort of Him who cre- 
ated man to exalt him. All was arranged for man's develop- 
ment, dominion was given, but man sinned and lost his power. 
Then plans for redemption were inaugurated and persistently 
developed until accomplished. The Bible is the record of 
God's effort to educate and perfect our race. 

GENESIS. 

This book recites the creation of the material worlds, the 
beginning of spiritual outgoings in the one we call earth, the 
special and personal revelation of God to his children, the 
fall, the development of the evil stock of the Cainites to 
arts and ferocity, the development of the good stock of 
the Sethites, the union of the two by marriages of pleas- 
ure, the necessary ruin of both by the deluge. A begin- 
ning again of the constant attempts at the elevation of 



THE PEN TA TEUCH, 



the race with the fairly good family of Noah, the descendant 
of Seth, the call of Abraham, the tenth from Shem and the 
twentieth from Adam. Then followed Jacob and the twelve 
founders of Israel. Thus through a single line of a few good 
men — Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, and Abraham — with hundreds 
of thousands passed by as of no sufficient account in this 
history of spiritual entities and highest realities, are detailed 
God's ceaseless efforts to exalt and make spiritual the race of 
men. 

Hence this book is the necessary basis of all the books of 
the Old and New Testaments. Here roots that tree of which 
the mustard is a feeble type that spreads through all the ages 
of this world and naturally grows into the inconceivable 
richness of the Tree of Life in the world to come. 

THE CONTINUOUS SENSE. 

[The terms herein used are designedly exegetical.] 

In the beginning God. Man says, in the beginning fiery 
star-dust of a cloud, force, chaos. Moses goes far back of 
this and puts being, personality, wisdom, cause. The first 
word of revelation is the greatest word, what man needed 
most to know. God created in orderly progression a series 
culminating in man, made in his image, and therefore fit for 
dominion. 

In the creative process we have the unarranged material 
for worlds, and the spirit that was working the changes 
(verses i, 2). The first product, light, created on Sunday 
(verse 3). Then the solid core of earth with lighter liquids, 
heavy air, and vaporous water around it (verse 7). Then he 
caused the mountains to ascend by earth's contraction, and 
the waters to descend into the ocean valleys prepared for 
them (verse 10). Next came great creative acts, by no possi- 
bility evolutions from any previous state of things, a. The 
creation of vegetation, low grass and high trees, their con- 



lo THE PENT A IE UCH. 

tinuance provided for without subsequent creation by seed 
in themselves (verse ii). b. Separate creations of each kind 
of animal life (verse 20) ; and c. By a special creation of man 
meant for the dominion of all (verse 26). After divine work, 
divine inspection and judgment. ''Good, exceedingly;** so 
good that he ceased working to better or advance it. The 
designed climax had been reached, and in commemoration of 
it he hallowed, made uncommon, every seventh day for man. 
So after inexpressible travail of soul for redemption, infi- 
nitely more difficult than creation, he shall be perfectly and 
eternally satisfied — '* Good, exceedingly." 

The words signifying creation have an intense personality 
about them. They signify artistic or architectural care, as 
one makes a statue painstakingly. He arranged the lights 
for days and the seasons. He made the sea, and his hands 
formed the lofty mountains and the sunny vales of the dry 
land. He ^^ formed the eye ** by exquisite and divine process. 
Not only in the creation of man was this care exercised, but 
of all men subsequently he may say as of Jeremiah, "I 
formed thee in the womb " and *' curiously wrought thy mem- 
bers *' while as yet unborn. 

The order of creation is more consistent with the average 
result of the interpretation of geologic records than different 
interpreters are with each other. Such an avoidance of mis- 
takes when as yet the science of geology was unknown is 
indubitable proof of inspiration. The Bible has been the 
prophet of science, and will be of philosophy. 

Chapter H. This is review and expansion. The world was 
made, but not yet paradisaical. One place was made so. 
Tlie man was made from the dust, by what length and mode 
of progress we know not; and he had by the breath of lives 
something in common between God and himself. But he 
was not yet developed. He must be tiained, educated, 
taught self-restraint ; licnce will-power. He was put in a 
land of delights and a single restriction laid on him, in the 



THE PEN TA TE UCH, n 



realm of his appetites. It was an infant's lesson of obedience 
in order to cooperation with his father. Obeying, he should 
live more and more largely ; disobeying, gradually he should 
die. Adam had knowledge enough to give apt and de- 
scriptive names to beasts. These satisfied his soul but not 
his heart. Being alone he needed a helpmeet, a contrast, his 
reflected image, his other I. So God '^built** the woman 
with the same personal, painstaking care, acted as first 
groomsman and minister, and declared that two married were 
one ; singleness was incompleteness; that marriage should be 
monogamic and indissoluble. As Adam had given names 
before, so he named this new being Maness^ the female man, 
an example followed ever since. Every husband and every- 
body else calls his wife the feminine of his own name — Mrs. 
Jones. It is no more derogation from the complete entity to be 
called Mrs. Jones than for the other party to be called Mr. 
Jones. God waited until the beauty and delights of paradise 
were completed before he made Maness — home before wife. 
Chapter III. Suggestion of sin is from without, from the 
serpent, alone subtile among beasts. The woman was unques- 
tionably loyal until beaten by beguiling logic. When definite 
commandments say ** Thou shalt not," argumentative subtilties 
should be shunned. Eve repeats the prohibition, minifies 
the name of the God who makes it, and adds to it ** neither 
shall ye touch it." She then gives the lower reason for 
obedience, '^ lest ye die " — a reason that can be and is im- 
mediately met. Then her taste for the beautiful is appealed 
to. She saw three kinds of pleasantness and ate. The first 
great moral battle ended in defeat. Soon as both partook of 
the fruit of the tree of knowledge they "knew," not as gods, 
but as sinners or Satan. They heard the voice going on 
the evening breeze. Mercy and love sought the first sinners, 
with a rod, indeed, but also with cover and promise of super- 
nal help. Adam is first called to account. He is asked 
why he did it, then Eve. The serpent is not asked. 



1 2 THE PENT A TEUCH, 

There was previous sin in the universe. Its history may 
fill more volumes than ours. The old serpent. 

Results of sin : i. Sense of uncoveredness. Liable to 
be assailed from everywhere by everything. 2. Fear, and 
hence hiding from love and help. 3. Lying by indirection. 
4. Casting the blame on God. 5. Cursed. For sinners noth- 
ing is so good as hard work. Let even paradise bring forth 
thistles. 6. Excluded from the stimulating, invigorating Tree 
of Life. 

Efforts at redemption are immediate, indeed, provided for 
before the foundation of the world. Their final success is 
prophesied. Salvation comes from the combined efforts of 
God and man, culminating in the God-man. These efforts 
early had marked success. The Sethites were the Macrobioi, 
or the long-lived ones. None need stumble over their long 
lives, for the Scriptures as all visible nature are full of things 
impossible to men and impossible for men to account for. 
And one of them, Enoch, so pleased God that the originally 
designed mode of transition from the first life to the second 
w^ithout death was granted him. 

Chapter IV. Gotten a man, the Jehovah. This shows 
that Eve clearly apprehended the divine promise of a head- 
bruising seed. This is the beginning of the human habit of 
setting the time for the millennium — a habit hard to break. 

The first man born of the sinful pair, attending to his re- 
ligious observances carelessly, becomes a murderer, not be- 
cause Abel assaulted him, stole from him, or derided him, 
but because he was good, kept the law of sacrifices exactly, 
and was therefore accepted of God. His depth of sin is 
seen in the fact that he lied when he knew it was no use, as 
it never is. The blood drops were crying his sin from the 
ground. Yet even Satan does it, knowing its futility. 

Man and earth are early related. Man innocent is in para- 
dise, fallen is in a desert of thorns. To Cain the earth shall 
not yield her full strength, nor to any other sinner. Yet 



THE PENT A TE UCH. 1 3 

even for Cain mercy and help are offered. God says to him 
(verse 7) : ^' If thou doest not well, sin is a croucher at the 
door, and his (the croucher's) desire is against thee. But 
thou shouldst rule over him." — Cox. 

In Cain's fear of outward things he built a city for protec- 
tion. Here were developed the arts of metallurgy ; here were 
cultivated music, song, and concerts. Here dwelt Cain's de- 
scendant, Lamech, who first introduced polygamy. His two 
wives were named for their sensual attractions. Murder, or 
exulting threat of murder, breaks out again (verse 23). 
Things are in a bad way for the Cainites. The necessary 
deluge is gathering in the heavens. Besides Eve only three 
women are named before the flood, and they are all ministers 
to pleasure only. 

Humanity must start a new line. To Eve is born Seth, 
** appointed " to her by God in the place of the good Abel. 
Then it was men began to call or pray in the name of the 
Lord. This sort of men were called the ** sons of God." 
The names of the Sethite sons indicate a godly faith, a recog- 
nition of God and actual prophecy by Lamech, the father 
of Noah (verse 29). In Lamech, the seventh from Cain, 
another kind of man altogether from the Sethite of this same 
name, culminate fierce passions and murderous violence. 
In Enoch, the seventh from Seth, appear holy communion 
with God and exemption from that style of exit from this 
world that sin brought. Man was not created subject to 
death. There have been exemptions, and will be again, by 
the million — when the living are changed. 

But men do not always retain the virtue of their ancestors. 
The Sethic men, called the sons of God, saw that the Cainic 
daughters of men were fair. To marry a Cainite, especially 
several of them, because they are handsome, is to invite ruin 
and run to meet it. The wickedness was horrible (vi, 5). 
It embraced every imagination of mind and every impulse of 
the heart. God saw it was necessary to wipe out the race 



1 4 THE PENT A TE UCH. 

after giving it one hundred and twenty years necessary for 
preparing the ark (verse 4). There was just one exception, 
Noah, a man of fidelity and sound integrity, honest in his 
times, who walked with God. Let the race begin again with 
him as it did with Seth. We are not sure how soon it will 
plunge into vices and ruin again. Such possibilities of power 
and companionship must have opposite contingencies in a 
free will. 

The flood sweeps away fair women, strong men, art, music, 
cities. But one fairly pious house survives, largely on ac- 
count of the piety of its head. 

A covenant is made with Noah for the race, with the rain- 
bow for a seal (ix, 1-19). 

Of the three sons of Noah, Shem signified a great name 
because of his worship germinating the theocracy. Japheth 
signified intellectual and material enlargement, culture, hu- 
manism. Hence religion is again made the ground of select- 
ing one worthy of going into history. Ham's son, Canaan, 
fills Canaan with its abominable inhabitants, named only to 
show how the descendants of Shem swept them away. His- 
tory follows the line of which Christ and all the hopes of 
humanity are to be born. 

God having promised a great name to Shem by reason of 
his virtue, others, under the leadership of a king whose name 
meant ^* let us rebel," sought a name by a tower. God made 
it to be called Confusion. So ties of blood, cities walled up 
high, pride, conquest, pass into night and nothingness. 

The wandering Terah seeks Canaan, but stops in Haran. 
Thence God called his son Abram, and began his education 
by asking him to surrender all — country, kindred, father's 
home — and take God's guidance and training. He was far 
from perfect at first. But one hundred years of education 
in the line of sacrifice and obedience, reaching as far as giv- 
ing up his son as God had his, and to faith that counted 
God able to raise up from the ashes him ow whom the prom- 



THE PENTATEUCH, 



ise rested, brought Abram up to where he could be called 
*' the friend of God," and to be commanded to walk be- 
fore God and be perfect. Many think they reach that end 
with a far less sacrifice. 

The greatest pains were taken that Isaac, his son, should 
not marry a wife from among the heathen. But his brother 
Esau hasted to do that very thing several times. Bad as 
Jacob, named the Supplanter, was, he was a great improve- 
ment on his brother Esau. Especially was it true after his 
wrestling with God at Jabbok and restoring to his brother 
all he had wTongfully taken from him. Let not men any 
more salute him as " Supplanter," but as a " Prince of God." 

God's painstaking forbearance is immense. He bears 
with a thousand faults and aids in a thousand emergencies. 
The taint of sin was in everybody — Noah, Jacob, Joseph ; 
but God was always trying to get them toward obedience of 
his holy law and to a thousandfold more blessing than any 
of them were willing to take. To this end he sets his ladder 
down at Bethel, with beckoning angels asking Jacob to ascend. 
Nay, he comes himself with theophanies so many, and efforts 
to exalt so frequent, that they constitute the best part of hu- 
man history. 

The only history worth reading is that which tells of God*s 
holding men by the arms to teach them to go in lofty paths 
of exuberant success. The highest poetry known is that 
which connects the events in human lives with the guidance 
of the Father in heaven. 

About two thousand two hundred and seventy-five years 
after Adam the chosen family consists of Jacob and his 
twelve sons. They are not a very promising lot. The 
father was as partial in his love as his mother Rebecca 
had been. He gave Joseph a long white garment, to rep- 
resent ease and authority and calculated to stir up the 
bitterest hatred and strife. Joseph did not fail by displaying 
it, and by the relation of dreams of the sun, moon, and eleven 



l6 THE PENT A TE UCH. 

stars bowing down to him, to stir up more strife. Simeon 
and Levi were hot in avenging their wrong with deceit and 
much blood. And all but Reuben conspired to slay their 
brother Joseph. Could such a lot of sons be better for 
founding a nation than Noah's ? Would not the chosen race 
need to choose one good man and start again ? 

No, send them all into Egypt to school. Let the chasten- 
ing and reproofs of the Lord give wisdom. Paradise and the 
goodly land of Canaan had failed. Let oppression be so ex- 
ceeding bitter that they shall all cry unto the Lord in the 
absence of any other possible helper. Let the nation be 
melted in the furnace of affliction and compacted by the 
blows of oppression four hundred years, till they shall all say, 
*' Him only will we serve;" till they will follow him through 
seas and deserts, a people so united that wars, expatriations, 
and slaveries cannot disintegrate them till the Saviour shall 
be born. 

After the discipline of slavery that of military government 
and a theocracy followed. 

Israel is brought out of Egypt by a mighty stretched-out 
arm. Every god of Egypt was overturned in the ten plagues. 
And for forty years it had daily guidance, protection, and 
food in the desert from God. Thus were they taught his 
omnipotence and their total dependence. The smoke of 
sacrifices daily wrote on the skies their sinfulness and God's 
holiness. The principles of human government were so well 
laid down, the rights of tlie lowly and poor so well protected, 
the unit of humanity so recognized and honored, that our 
American Constitution, " greatest birtli of time," is the natu- 
ral outcome of the laws of tlie desert. Moses is more the 
author of it than Jefferson. The teachings of Sinai were not 
for tlie Jews only, but for the world. The law was their 
schoolmaster, the desert their school, the lessons hard be- 
cause so hJL^h, the rods and chastisements many and severe, 
but they came through Jordan a pretty well-drilled host. 



THE PENT A TE UGH. 1 7 

Twenty-five centuries of love and care had yielded fruit. 
Fifteen more of equal love and care were to follow, and 
then the Lord would come and die to save his people from 
their sins. 

" O Lord, how great are thy works ! and thy thoughts are 
very deep." 

A CLUSTER OF DATES. 

[To be indelibly memorized.] 

Creation of Adam 4004 B. C. 

The Deluge 2348 B. C. 

Call of Abraham 192 1 B. C. 

Inodus 1706 B. C. 

Exodus 1491 B. C. 

Canaan entered 1 45 1 B. C. 

These dates are not divinely revealed, but are humanly 
estimated. They are commonly accepted. The call of 
Abraham was probably about 2100 B. C, and the Inode 
about 1900 B. C. This corresponds to God's plan that a 
strange land should evil entreat them four hundred years. 

DIVISION INTO TOPICS. 

CRITICAL STUDY OF WORD MEANINGS. 

The main idea of God's revelation is not world building, 
geology, astronomy, history of dynasties or races, but salva- 
tion. This is to be accomplished by the death of Christ. 
The preparations are many and long. The Old Testament 
is a record of some of them. One half of the time of Bible 
history is put into the first eleven chapters. During that 
time God dealt directly with each person without intervening 
priest or organized institutions. But men did not like to re- 
tain him in their thoughts ; so a new plan had to be followed. 
God dealt with those who were good enough and sufficiently 



1 8 THE PEN TA TE UCH. 

sensitive to divine impressions to become prophets and 
teachers of the rest. Since men would not have God for a 
ruler, Abraham was selected, who would command his children 
after him. And under Moses an elaborate system of worship, 
rites, and priesthood was established. Teaching was always 
carefully proportioned to capacity and willingness to be 
taught ; and at any minute, any man, anywhere, could rise 
beyond rites and priesthood of another into personal com- 
munion such as Abraham, Enoch, and unfallen Adam had 
enjoyed. 

SPECIMEN ANALYSIS. 

(Many divisions and characterizations of the matter con- 
tained in Genesis have been made. On the whole I prefer 
that of Lange, and have adopted it with modifications. It 
perceives not only events but their wide meaning. It is 
given as a specimen or sample. The student should treat 
the other books in a similar manner.) 

FIRST PERIOD. 

Creative history of the primeval world. The earliest 
period of the human race, as history of the earliest religion 
till the development of heathendom and its contrast with the 
budding patriarchdom. Chapters i-ix. 

DIVISION I. The genesis of the world, of the contrast between heaven 
and earth, and of the first man. Chapters i and ii. 

Section i. God, heaven, earth, man. The physico-genetical creation 
and world development. Chapters i-ii, 3. 

Verse i. In the beginning: of this series of events. 
God : plural form. Created does not mean out of nothing. 
The heavens and tlie land. 

2. Moved, brooded. 

3. Since Cod is liglu, he gave himself masteringly to chaos. 
5. Evening and morning. Not vice versd. In all God's 

days the dark part comes first, the glory last. 



THE PENTATEUCH, 19 

6. Firmament, an expansion, not solid ; a visible expanse 
under the lifted clouds to divide waters from waters. The 
ability of our present air to carry water is amazing. At 
Cossyah, India, fifty-one feet of rain falls in a year ; at 
Cayenne twenty-one inches fell in one day. That was the 
mere surplusage over and above saturation. There was still 
left ten thousand tons of water in a cubic mile of air. 

8. Heaven, the expanse of heavens. Sun and moon set 
there (14). Fowls fly there (20). 

9. Let waters be gathered : by means of gravitation, 
which no man understands better than Herschel, who says : 
** It is but reasonable to regard gravity as a result of a con- 
sciousness and will existent somewhere.'* 

10. Called the dry (substance) land. 

14. For signs, of God's power, not gods to be worshiped. 
The whole universe is a sign, a manifestation. 

21. Whales, sea-monsters. 

26. In our (plural) image (plural also), namely, likeness. 
A special council seems to be held. Many theories, all good, 
try to explain what this image is. But we shall not fully 
know till the new man is created after God in righteousness 
and holiness of truth, till we "bear the image of the heav- 
enly." 

28. Dominion, how relishable and broad, over all animals, 
steam, lightning, air, etc. 

Chapter ii. Recapitulation of the first. 

3. The Sabbath is of divine origin. The reason for it is 
this : because God gave himself up six days to labor for 
man he required man to give himself up one day for both. 

Section 2. Man, paradise, the pair, and the institutions of paradise. 
The reverse principal development proceeding from man. The symbol of 
the Tree of Life. Chapter ii, 4-25. 

Here is given a brief recapitulation of chapter i, with 
additional particulars as a ground for further statements. 



20 THE PENT A TEUCH. 

5. Literally, And no shrub of the field was arising in the 
land, and no herb of the field was yet sprouting. 

6. Mist went up, to supply the reservoirs of the sky and 
come down as rain. " Pour down the rains of its vapor." 
Job xxxvi, 27. 

7. Formed. More painstaking than created. 

Dust, of the superior excellence of the primitive, un- 
cursed paradisaical earth. A far better body than now. It 
might easily be made to last a thousand years. 

Breathed into, Man is formed of earth, but insouled of 
God. 

16. Freely eat. Unrestricted enjoyment. The loving 
Father provides life, garden, wife. 

17. Not eat of one tree, a prohibition and restraint to 
develop will power and obedience. 

The whole scope of revelation makes clear that man is 
carefully made and inspired by God, not autochthonous or 
developed from beasts. Men and species of animals, left to 
themselves, degenerate. It requires the care of man to de- 
velop animals, and of God to develop man. 

DIVISION II. The genesis of the world histor}% of the temptation, of 
the sin of man, of the judgment, of death, of salvation, of the contrast be- 
tween a divine and worldly direction in humanity, of the common ruin. 
The animus of antediluvian sin. Chapters iii, i-vi, 7. 

Section i. The lost paradise. Chapter iii. 

I. Really ? Is it true that God hath said.^ 

4. Ye shall not surely die. A liar from the beginning. 

5. Eyes shall be opened. They were. See verse 7. 
14-19. All this manifold sentence has been perfectly ful- 
filled in all ages and nations. 

15. Enmity between serpent and woman. Is it true ? 
Ask a woman. 

Bruise head, heel. Great difference in result. 
Christianity strikes squarely at head. Satan and infidels 



THE PENTATEUCH, 21 

of his sort sneak round behind to take a nip at the heel. 
The main things of Christianity are seldom attacked. 

In the first judgment is put the first promise of salvation. 
It is put in a most easily rememberable shape and has never 
been forgotten. Nay, this same covenant has been enlarged 
and particularized twenty times in the Pentateuch, many 
times more in prophecy and psalm. 

20. Eve. A new name. The quickener of life, physical, 
mental, spiritual. Adam is under sweeping condemnation of 
death, but there is one comfort left — Eve. 

Sin is a most serious and damnable matter. It breaks the 
laws of best existence and lets one down from that existence 
to a lower. The whole account of the temptation and fall 
wonderfully corresponds with human nature as confirmed in 
every man's consciousness. But to fully understand all this 
is to understand man, sin, Satan, hell, and God. We must 
wait. 

24. Cherubim. The obedient spirit-world is here dis- 
closed. 

Section 2. Cain and Abel. The Cainites. The ungodly, secular, first 
culture. Chapter iv, 1-24. 

Chapter iv, i. Cain. Means, I have "acquired " Jehovah. 

2. Abel=A vapor, a nothingness. In pitiable contrast with 
the joy of the first birth. But mothers cannot predict the 
lives of their babes. 

3. Cain brought fruit. All right, always in order, but 
failed or refused to bring what was required — a blood 
offering. An inch displacement means wreck and ruin of 
a train. Some ways of getting gold are all right ; not 
Achan's. 

5. Cain very wroth, greatly inflamed, fired up. 

6. The Lord saw the peril and appeared to prevent it. 
Heathen divinities take very little notice of human sins. 
The Holy God does. 



22 THE PENTATEUCH. 

7. Not be accepted ? Is there not an uplifting ? That 
is always the result of obedience. 

13. My punishment is greater. Perhaps it means my 
sin is greater than can be forgiven. 

14. Every one . . . slay me. ''The thief doth fear 
each bush an officer." 

15. Set a mark on Cain, the sinner. He does yet. 
Keen eyes always see it. 

22. Instructor. Better, a forger of all that cuts brass and 
iron. 

23. This exulting Lamech says, perhaps, '' I have slain the 
man who wounded me, and will slay any young man who 
bruises me, and bring seventyfold vengeance." 

Section 3. Adam and Seth. The Sethites or M aerobians. The liv- 
ing worship and the blessing of renewed life in the line of the sons of God. 
Chapters iv, 25-v, 32. 

Chapter v, 3. After his image, namely, Adam's. What 
a falling off in one generation ! 

22. Walked with, not before as a herald, under as a 
workman, nor after as a slave, but with, voluntarily, as a 
lover. 

24. God took him. Immortality intimated. 

29. Noah==Rest. Did Lamech hope that this son would 
bring in the closing Sabbath of humanity ? AVe are saved by 
hope. It springs immortal. 

Section 4. The universal, godless ruin in consequence of the mixture 
of both lines. Chapter vi, 2-7. 

Chapter vi, 3. Spirit not always strive with man and 

be despised by him, because he is clearly all flesh. 

4. Giants. Not correctly rendered. Perhaps fallen men, 
or causing others to fall by fear, etc. 

5. Depravity could not be more total. 

6. Anthropomorphic. 



THE PENT A TE UCH. 23 

DIVISION III. The genesis of the judgment of the world and its re- 
newing by means of the separating flood. The flood and the drowned 
race. The ark and the saved humanity. (The ark, a type of the pious 
house, of the pious state, of the Church on but above a wicked world.) 
The first typical covenant. Chapters vi, 8-ix, 19. 

Section i. The calling of Noah, and the ark. Chapters vi, 8-vii, g. 

8. Noah found grace. He was not merely inoffensively 
good, but he preached to corrupt peoples and was a Mount 
Everest of faith and works for one hundred and twenty years. 

12. Corrupt. An awfully strong word. Infinite purity 
was looking on w^hat men thought pretty nice. Proof of in- 
spiration. 

14. Gopher. Resinous wood, light and strong, likely cy- 
press. 

17. Flood, used only of the great deluge, except Psalm 
xxix, 10. Sin generis. 

Earth. Better, land. The deluge may have been uni- 
versal for man, but not for the earth. 

18. I will make to stand my covenant with thee. 
The absolute Personality makes contract with the human 
personality. There can be no religion without this idea. It 
being once made, let the fountains of the great deep be bro- 
ken up ; let the land sink as low as the Caspian or Dead Sea ; 
let the flood gates of heaven be opened ; all is secure to the 
man who is in a covenant. He shall see the smile of God in 
the rainbow that ends the storm. 

Section 2. The flood and the judgment of death. Chapter vii, 10-21. 

Chapter vii, 10. The flood is historic in both sacred and 
profane writings. 

11. There is definiteness of names, dates, and measures. 
This is not poetry. Broken up. Sudden cleaving. A very 
strong word. 

12. Rain. Heavy rain. In a body, as it were. 

16. Lord shut him in. And let him out. Chapter 



24 THE PEN TA TE UCH. 

viii, i6. In the first instance Noah waited the command, 
** Come in/* and in the second, ** Go out." 

Section 3. The ark, the saved and renewed humanity. Chapter viii, 
1-19. 

Chapter viii, i. God remembered Noah. And Noah 
remembered to wait his call. 

7. Raven. Not return. Dead carcasses plenty. 

9. Dove. Seven days after. There being no clean place 
for the dainty dove she returns. The symbol of the Spirit is 
selected wisely. 

II. Olive leaf plucked off, freshly, not picked up. 

Section 4. The first typical covenant. The original moral law (com- 
mandments of Noah). The symbol of the rainbow. Chapters viii, 20- 
ix, 19. 

20. Altar. The word is from the verb, to slay. Fruits 
not sufficient. This man called perfect (vi, 9) makes solemn 
confession of sin for himself and his family. All humanity 
once more stands at the altar of sacrifice and is accepted. A 
blessing for all the race is obtained (verse 21). Though the 
evil heart of man is recognized, mercy shall henceforth reign. 
Noah put the thanksgiving and covenant before business. 

Chapter ix, 3. Meat for you. Animal food is now per- 
mitted, if not before. Dominion offered as at first. 

13. I have set my bow. Not now for the first neces- 
sarily. 

DIVISION IV. Contrast between the blessing of Shem (worship) and 
that of Japheth (culture). 

Section I. The revelation of sin and piety in Noah's house. The curse 
and the blessing of Noah. The double blessing and tlie blessing in the 
curse itself. Chapter ix, 21-29, 

21. "Was drunken. Perhaps innocently. Certainly not 
a second time. 

25. Noah awoke and said. Prophetic insight sees in 



THE PENT A TE UCH, 25 

children their outcome. This is prophecy, not Noah's male- 
diction. Ham's youngest son had traits to be accursed, but 
not all Ham's sons. Ham is neither blessed nor cursed. 
The filial act of Shem and Japheth made an occasion for 
declaring the blessedness of the first, and the pushing en- 
largement of the second, and that when the Japhetic nations 
have made enlargements over all realms material, scientific, 
intellectual, then let them come and dwell in the tents of 
Shem, the spiritual. 

Section 2. The genealogical table. Chapter x, 1-22. 
Section 3. The building of the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, 
and the dispersion of nations. Chapter xi, 1-9, 

Chapter xi, 4. Tower. Its ruins remain to this day, four 
hundred feet square at the base, one hundred and fifty-three 
feet high, built of bricks thoroughly burned. 

9. Confound the language. Comparative philology 
clearly shows this to have occurred. Signs of an earthquake 
are not clearer. There was once one language, now eight 
hundred and sixty. If the Lord can unify languages as at 
Pentecost or in heaven, why not as suddenly confound in 
Shinar .^ Discovered cuneiform inscriptions attest the princi- 
pal facts. 

From Shinar to Canaan the distance is short geographic- 
ally, immense intellectually and spiritually. The Shemites, 
descendants of the Sethites, not known to be involved in the 
Babel disaster that came to the Hamic peoples, moved toward 
Canaan. Terah, who probably worshiped other gods (Josh. 
xxiv, 2), stopped in Haran. Thence Abram was called to go 
forward. 

Here was a man susceptible of spiritual culture. His first 
lesson was obedience, showing faith. The tests came to be 
the most searching and trying possible, for great faith was 
required in the Father of the Faithful. No name is more 
widely known and honored to-day ; Jews, Mohammedans, and 



26 THE PENT A TE UCH, 

Christians unite to do him reverence. He was not only sep- 
arated from Terah and his gods at first, but afterward from 
Lot, who yearned for Sodom. The Lord appeared to him 
often. A new and broader covenant was made ; it included 
all the families of the earth. He bore in his body, sanctify- 
ing the very source of life, the marks and pledge of his fidelity. 
The covenant was broad, and the whole blazing page of the 
clear eastern sky was written over with the innumerable 
signs of its extent and of the stability and inviolableness of the 
promise of God. 

METHOD OF EXEGESIS. 

The method pursued in this sample is this : 

1. From general to particular. Get the most general idea, as 
the name of the book, page 5. 

2. Get an introduction from some one who knows the book. 
An introduction to an individual may include, besides the 
name, a general idea of the business, tastes, tendencies, and 
family connections of the party introduced. Then we can 
more easily study particulars afterward. See the germinating 
seed, then the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear in 
due order (page 5). 

3. Get an idea of the general subject discussed and the 
way in which it is to be treated. We know a book to be 
about chemistry or astronomy before we read it, and we soon 
find out whether it is treated experimentally or theoretically. 
This book is about religion, and is treated experimentally, 
and on the largest scale. 

4. Write out the continuous sense (page 9). This will take 
a careful reading. 

5. Divide it into sections appropriately described in brief 
headings. 

6. Make a careful study of words in their primitive mean- 
ings. If the pupil cannot do this by his own knowledge 
there are vast treasures of the closest study ever put on any 



I 



THE PENT A TE UCH, 27 

book within easy reach in concordance, commentary, and cur- 
rent literature. Thus, an engineer gets knowledge of a coun- 
try, first by maps and conversations with travelers, then he 
observes roughly from hilltops, divides it into sections, then 
applies the close study and accurate work of the theodolite, 
and brings back to those sending him an exact statement of 
what a road will cost a thousand miles away. It is expected 
that the remainder of Genesis and the Pentateuch will be 
treated in a similar way by the pupil. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE INVESTIGATOR. 

This should accord with the spirit of the subject. Crom- 
well was great in war and government, but his spirit in art 
was expressed by sledge hammers on statues and firebrands 
on pictures. A man can go over the majestic and beautiful 
fields of science and see only the mistakes of the investiga- 
tors. The riches of the universe are not so much to him as 
a mistake of a man. The student of poetry should be him- 
self an " enamored architect of airy rhyme " and of the high- 
est thought. Much more should the investigator of the 
Bible have the spirit of the Bible. Of course he can test 
its statements of arithmetic, dynasties, geography, and eth- 
nology as a mere critic, but its spiritual things must be 
spiritually discerned. There is a Holy Spirit offered to guide 
students into all truth, and without his aid all the aroma of 
the tree of life, and the high significances of abbreviatures 
and hieroglyphics will be lost, A prayer like that in the 
first line should be ever rising like the mist of the Garden of 
Delights, to water and make green every good seed. 

PARTS AND WHOLE. 

Everything should be looked at as a part of a whole. The 
falling rain and ascending mist are alike related to gravita- 
tion. Sun spots are a necessary outcome of that measure- 



28 THE PEN TA TE UCH. 

less energy that gives sun splendor. In science we keep ac- 
count of the inexplicable exceptions to our general laws, till 
a broader generalization shall include them. Then the re- 
tardations of Uranus do not overthrow the theory of gravita- 
tion, but point out undiscovered Neptune, and the universe 
widens on man's view. 

RESULTS. 

For hundreds of years the most critical acumen and closest 
study have been employed on the Bible. With what results ? 

1. That these writings of fishermen, herdsmen, and shep- 
herds of early ages are worthy of the study of the ripest and 
best scholars of the present. 

2. The Bible was never so authenticated and believed as 
now. The retardations and retrogressions of Uranus and 
worlds not material point to wider skies and higher heavens. 

3. Sin is a horrible thing, measurelessly so. It has abounded 
like an ocean. It blights Eden, curses the earth, blasts hu- 
manity, and beggars heaven to make redemption. Any of it 
is harm, loss of capacity, habit of depravity. The more we 
study the more intense words become. Thoughts are so high 
that our syllables will not reveal them. So nature is filled 
with speech, a deluge is intensely expressive, and Calvary 
reveals things impossible to word. If worlds are rich the 
Word is more so. 

4. The grace of God has provided a salvation from sin 
always and everywhere sufficient, joyful, eternal, for all who 
will accept its conditions. Sin has indeed abounded, but 
grace much more. 

Preachers are set to make these things known to men who 
are wayfaring, hence having no time, and fools, having no 
capacity. First pupils, then teachers (Deut. vi, 7). 



STUDIES 

(Zealous Thinking) 
IN THE 

ADDRESSES OF ISAIAH 

(Jah is Helper). 



If God have written in hieroglyphics and abbreviatures how shall we 
ever hope to read them without a hint or key from the Spirit that indited 
them ? — Browne, 

General Ideas. A prophet is the religious teacher of his 
age. To have received a call and message direct from God, 
and to have delivered it in spite of any peril, is the essence of 
prophetism. Predicting was ever a small part of prophecy. 
Perhaps seven would cover the list of eminently predictive 
prophets in the Old Testament, but there were hundreds of 
them. They ministered in rebuke, instruction, and organi- 
zation. They were a kind of unmuzzled free press when 
there were no newspapers. Samuel and Moses were far 
more given to organization than prediction. 

But all nature is ever predictive — buds, birds' nests, and 
migrations, honey-gathering, spring, and summer. We pre- 
dict our acts for a year, and give bonds to fulfill. God pre- 
dicts his for thousands, and gives bonds — all heaven and 
earth — to fulfill. But in order to fulfill there must be an 
ordered sequence of affairs, on regularly established con- 
ditions. These conditions must be taught and enforced. 



30 STUDIES IN 



Hence the necessity for teachers to teach and authority to 
enforce. 

Prophets were of many kinds and grades ; so their names 
indicate. Nabhi means " to bubble up, to boil." God the 
fire. Against any wrong they were liable to become volcanoes 
of wrath, as Nathan and Elijah. Roeh means a seer, one who 
has supernatural insight and perspicacity, as Samuel. Chozeh 
is a seer into depths and events of other realms. Sometimes 
they had visions in the night, dreams; sometimes face-to- 
face communion with God, as Moses. He was doubtless of 
the highest rank of prophets. Christ was raised up to be 
like unto him. And the work of this ideal prophet was but 
slightly predictive. 

The modes of delivering their messages were various: i. 
Plainest speech, as to Ahab. 2. Symbolic acts with an ob- 
scured meaning, as Jeremiah, and Christ's parables. The gift 
cf prophecy in the New Testament wonderfully adapts one 
to taking part in prayer meetings and Christian work. 

Prophets were a sublime kind of men. Kings were noth- 
ing to them. Kingly authority and presumption might be 
great, but it cowered instantly when a greater authority said 
to Ahab in his triumph : " The dogs shall lick thy blood; " 
and to David, " Thou art the man." A man who really has 
God in him fears not what man shall do unto him. Isa- 
iah frankly opposes Ahaz (vii, i), the chamberlain Shebna 
(xxii, 15), the other prophets, priests, and the whole people 
(ii, iii, V, xxviii, 7). He sharply reproves the rash vanity of 
Plezekiah, and plainly tells him that all this treasure and 
even some of his sons shall be carried away into Babylon 
(xxxix, 5). 

Prophecy has constantly revealed : i. The unity of God and 
cf his plans, growing more and more definite. 2. Human 
nature, even when it was not known to the person himself 
(2 Kings viii, 13). 3. Personal and individual immortality. 

Prophecy has had its four great periods, with centuries of 



ISAIAH. 31 



silence between : the patriarchal, Mosaic, the monarchical, 
and the time of Christ; all are harmonious and progressive. 

Prophets have never hesitated to apply their instruction, 
to embody in organizations their ideas of government, and 
put their predictions to the test of time — time of one day for 
changing sorest famine to greatest plenty (2 Kings vii, i), 
and time of thousands of years, and the years of eternity, for 
the fulfillment of plans as much greater. 

The argument is this : If these prophecies are fulfilled, 
then the omnipotent and omniscient God has made and ac- 
complished them. The nothingness of idols could not so 
control the events of great kingdoms. Seven times Isaiah 
presents this argument, and seven times the events justify the 
predictions. 

We have now a more sure word of prophecy whereunto 
we do well to take heed. 

Criticism (a discerning). It is most welcome. Man has 
a desire and aptitude to apply criteria. The Bible has been 
subjected to more criticism, better and worse, than anything 
else. Its friends have been diligently at it for thousands of 
years. This fact testifies to its largeness. It cannot be soon 
or ever exhausted. Criticism has developed a whole science 
with five departments — textual, historical, archaeological, 
philosophical, and experimental. It is easy to make assaults 
in one department that seem for a time to succeed. But 
still ** Zion stands with walls surrounded.*' 

In matters of literary criticism there is room for colossal 
mistakes. Shakespeare is not very old, but one man has 
proved to his satisfaction and many others that Lord Bacon 
wrote his plays. And another man by the same rules has 
proved that Shakespeare wrote Lord Bacon's works. It is a 
sword of two edges. Napoleon is not yet out of the mem- 
ory of living men, but some of the rules applied to demolish 
Scripture verity have been applied to cast most serious 
doubts on his existence. For years the critics who favored 



32 STUDIES IN 



a multiplex authority of Homer had things pretty much all 
their own way. But a higher criticism has just restored to 
the blind old bard his own intellectual property. A class of 
very confident and audaciously a^^sertive critics lately affirmed 
that the fourth gospel was not written by John. They are 
very lonely and without respect to-day. 

Criticism claims to have taken out of our historic realities 
William Tell and Regulus. It has also tried to take away 
our Lord. But his living presence in millions of hearts dis- 
sipates such a conclusion. A few years ago I was awed in 
the presence of one of the greatest achievements of man, the 
great stone wall of China. During the same summer a 
Frenchman proved to his satisfaction by literary lucubrations 
(working by lamplight) that no such great wall ever existed. 
I saw it in the day and still believe in the stone wall, and in 
the Rock of Ages also. 

Let no student of the Bible fear the sharpest criticism. 
The book that has sustained it for thousands of years is in 
no peril. Seven distinct assaults have been made on the 
possibility and fact of miracles. Each new one confesses that 
all previous ones have failed. 

The assaults on Isaiah have been mostly to discredit its 
supernaturalism. But without supernaturalism no kingdom 
of nature or grace is possible. Poets are the best critics of 
poetry, artistic natures of art, and men of devout spirit of 
the oracles of God. They have promise of divine help. No 
weapon formed against the Bible has ever prospered or ever 
will. 

The criticisms against Isaiah have been mostly on the fol- 
lowing points : About a century ago Semler questioned 
whether the book was written by one man, averring that the 
last twenty-seven chapters were in a different style, were writ- 
ten after the Babylonian captivity, that archaisms were used, 
and that the prophecies of Isaiah might have several writers 
as well as Webster's Dictionary. Eichhorn continued the 



ISAIAH. 33 



L 



attack, and Gesenius and Ewald pushed the doubt against 
the other sections, as xiii, i ; xiv, 23, and xxi, 6-10. 

To these allegations two things are to be replied : i. That 
prophecies are not to be invalidated by the question of 
authorship. Amid arguments for the Shakespearean author- 
ship of Bacon and the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare 
we still have the sublime essays and the immortal dramas. 
2. It is believed by devout and able scholars of the word 
that they still hold the fort ; that men can write differently at 
different times, as Milton and Longfellow, in poetry and prose. 
The question of unity of authorship is not a question of in- 
spiration. It is believed to be thoroughly established that 
the prophecies of Isaiah were written during his life and by 
the author whose name they bear. ** In favor of this stands the 
living tradition of a living body of truth -loving men, reach- 
ing through all the thousands of years that lie between us 
and the patriarchs. In its favor speaks the attested preserva- 
tion of early chapters of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 
through all revolutions of the Egyptian kingdoms, through 
many millenniums of time. In favor of this come ever and 
anon new voices from the mounds of perished cities and 
from the tombs of men who lived and wrote before the days 
of Moses. In favor of this stands every natural implication 
of the words of Him who spake as never man spake." — Presi- 
dent Warren. Isaiah being dead yet speaketh to our day. 
" Say to them of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not : behold, 
your God will come and save you." See Driver's Isaiah and 
his Tiines^ Whedons Co7n?nentary, The Pulpit Commentary^ 
and a most multitudinous literature of hundreds of volumes, 
A list of only the more important works would include over 
one hundred volumes. Both in regard to the controverted 
points concerning Isaiah and those of the Pentateuch ** con- 
servative students of God's word have as yet no call to sur- 
render." 

Personality. Isaiah was called the " Salvation of Jeho- 
3 



34 STUDIES IN 



vah." He lived in Jerusalem, was the son of Amoz (i, i),but 
of his father we know nothing more. Tradition says he w^as 
of royal blood ; what was better, he was of a royal priesthood. 
His wife was a prophetess. They had two sons, Shear-ja- 
shub, so named in prophetic assurance, " A remnant shall re- 
turn," and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, ** Speed-spoil-hurry-prey." 

Isaiah died with the clarion at his lips. Nothing is more 
jubilant than his last words. Tradition says that, as the 
critics are trying to do now with his works, he was sawn 
asunder. Ever the blind world stones its saints and crucifies 
its Christs. 

Time of Writing. This was about midway between 
Moses and Christ, during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, 
Ahaz, and Hezekiah, B. C. 758 to B. C. 697. Besides the 
prophecy bearing his name he WTOte a history of the reign of 
Uzziah and a work that contained an account of the reign 
of Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxiv, 22 ; xxxii, 32). 

Sociology. The social problems of our day and those of 
Isaiah's are strikingly similar. Reading the book through to 
get an idea of social relations, we find that Judah was pros- 
pering and growing rich rapidly (ii, 7 ; v, 8). This is always 
a peril. In the early part of his life Isaiah was thinking pre- 
eminently on the great social problems. How he opens his 
batteries against contemptibly little rulers (iii, 12), against 
land monopoly (v, 8), against drunkenness that carries off 
wealth (ii, 12) ! The doleful result on the whole people is 
depicted (13). Bribe-takers are scorched (23, 24). The peril 
that comes from elegant women seeking only for adornment, 
ease, and luxury has never been so clearly shown (iii, 16-26). 
Savonarola never denounced tlie luxury of Florence nor its 
hastening punishment in such exact and vivid terms. 

In his later years he denounces once more the deadliness 
to the state of having women careless and at ease (xxxii, 9). 
The dreadful sins of the rulers who covenant with death and 
hell instead of God are frightfully denounced (xxviii, 14-18). 



ISAIAH, 35 

To remedy these terrible oppressions of the poor he never 
suggests anarchy, mad strikes, and personal rebellion. Jeho- 
vah will vindicate his own justice. He will lead the foreign 
invaders ; they will be his scourges. 

But Isaiah is more constructive than destructive. Good 
rulers shall be restored, not from the nobles necessarily; 
they shall be chosen for qualities, not for rank (xxxiii, 
15). Surely our prophet better founds his ideal state on 
eternal principles of righteousness than any of the bomb- 
throwers and anarchists of to-day. 

Consider one of these sermons by itself. Take the one 
embraced in chapters ii-v. Having some grievous charges 
to bring, he secures attention by a glowing picture of their 
future glory. It chimed in with all their national traditions. It 
was "manifest destiny " done into poetry and illumined wuth 
prophecy. Israel shall walk in the light of the Lord. But 
having gained attention, awakened enthusiasm, portrayed the 
ideal, he turns to the horribly sinful real. He particularizes the 
sins that ruin Jerusalem and make Judah to fall. The time 
hastens when perfumes shall be stinks, all daintiness coarse- 
ness, and elegantly curled hair baldness. A slave's brand- 
mark shall be on Helen's beauty. Instead of having throngs 
of lovers there shall be such a scarcity of men after the wars 
and disasters that seven women shall renounce all claim to 
support and clothing, so be that they may bear the name of 
one man as his wife (iv, i). But out of this horrible picture 
of desolation springs the branch of the Lord beautiful and 
glorious (iv, 2-6). 

But he is not done yet. He is to make one more applica- 
tion of judicial cautery. But first he must win attention 
again. So he says, " Now I will sing to my well-beloved a 
song touching a vineyard." Love chose a sunny site on a 
horn of a hill, fenced it, mellowed it, dug out stones, chose 
choicest vines, in full expectation built the tower, to be seen 
afar ; made the wine presses and the vats ready for the sweet 



36 STUDIES IN 



wines. And lo, wild grapes, all stones and skins. O, my 
hearers, what will the lover do } Dig it up } Let in the wild 
boars ? Send in the fire ? '* Yes, yes," they answer hotly. 
Swiftly comes the application : " O, my hearers, you are the 
choice vine of Jehovah, Judea is the vineyard" (v, 7). 

Thence to the end of the sermon and chapter the terrible 
woes are poured in like hot shot. 

Characterization. Isaiah is the early evangelist. No 
spirit can be more regnant, no theme more lofty. He is an 
artist in words. He brought the Hebrew language to its 
highest development. He never uses a word too many nor 
too few. He deftly chooses symbols according to thought. 
There is ever a charm of discourse, a beauty of eloquence, 
and a clarity of meaning. He is a poet in ideas and an en- 
amored architect in embodying them. No wonder the schol- 
ars of the world are absorbed in the study of his pages. 

Besides, the predictions are so exact and minute in their 
details, and so perfectly fulfilled, that no sagacity of states- 
manship could foresee, no happy guess anticipate. A real 
inspiration from infinite knowledge is the easiest solution. 

The Consecutive Sense. In the year that King Uzziah 
died Isaiah saw the Lord on a throne high and lifted up, 
was convicted of having unclean lips and dwelling among a 
people like himself, but was symbolically and actually fire- 
cleansed and made ready to go and speak for God. He 
needed the greatest preparation and endowment, for he should 
speak without instructing, warn without saving, because of 
the hardness of their hearts. Whether this was the first 
preparation or a subsequent one for a greater and more 
awful revelation we do not know. 

The children of Israel, more stupid than ox or ass, would 
not know or even consider. They were laden with iniquity, 
provoked God to anger, had been smitten all over, but were 
neither reformed nor warned. Their cities were burned, 
their country desolate, themselves covered with putrefying 



ISAIAH. 37 

sores. Their religious observances were an abomination 
because their hands were fall of blood. God will make all 
their strength as tow and their works as a spark, both put 
out in a flash. 

But even in this sad stupidity of backsliding the Messianic 
promise brightly glows. The mountain of the Lord's house 
shall be established, all nations flow unto it, and Christ shall 
draw all men. Many missionaries shall teach the ways of the 
Lord till the nations shall learn war no more. At the first 
(chapters ii and iii) there is sunrise out of night. At the 
last it broadens into every kind of perfect day. 

Between this wicked present and the perfect future come 
many judgments and punishments and deliverances of Israel 
by means of surrounding nations. 

The pleasant vineyard on a very fruitful hill, tended with 
love, looked to with hope, till infinite care and love could 
do nothing more for it, brings forth only wuld grapes. Take 
away the hedge, let in the wild beasts, stop the tillage and the 
rain. Woe to great land monopolists (v, 8), to wine 
drinkers (ii), to the willfully ignorant. They that draw iniq- 
uity with cords shall do it with great ropes. Woe to revers- 
ers of right and wrong (20), to the self-conceited (21), to 
public dissoluteness (22). 

The time of clemency is past, mercy withdraws, wrath rises, 
the hand of punishment is uplifted. Call in the foreign execu- 
tioners, swift, sure, sleepless. Their arrows are sharp, bows 
bent, they roar like the sea bursting in on them. 
.. The light is darkened in the very heavens. But immedi- 
ately appears the promise of Immanuel born of the virgin. 
In every dark hour this is a source of immeasurable joy. It 
runs throughout the entire book. It is a triumphant paean of 
the conquering Redeemer, though at times can be heard, the 
wail of stricken nations. 

In the midst of this sublime flow of prophecy comes that 
divine invitation of universal compass (chap. Iv, i) : *' Ho, 



38 STUDIES IN 



every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that 
hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine 
and milk without money and without price." The rock is 
smitten, the manna has fallen, and all the world is invited to 
the feast. It is only the Gne who has given abundant air 
and infinite sunlight who could make so broad an invitation. 

This invitation is to be as widely accepted as given. It 
never has been yet. Chapter Ix has never been fulfilled. It 
has had many partial fulfillments, but larger, wider fulfill- 
ments are to come. Judgment from the human nature as 
displayed in the past could not infer such acceptance. Only 
inspiration can afiirm it. One view of the possibility of such 
acceptance fills one with a burning desire to preach good 
tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim 
liberty to the captives and the acceptable year of the Lord. 

One almost forgets the wails of sinful and stricken nations 
in the loud triumphs of victory that fill earth and heaven. 

Great Passages. Musicians will play for hours the 
most intricate and difficult passages without the written notes. 
Singers step and leap along the most undulating paths with- 
out a stumble. Every minister should know at least fifty 
hymns and as many great passages in the word of God. The 
one just given is one of them. The memorization of such 
great expressions of thought incredibly enriches and exalts 
one's vocabulary. It gives one words that God is pledged to 
so fill with power that they shall not return void (Iv, ii). 
There is no such promise behind our words. 

There is no such depicting of the stupidity and folly of sin 
as chapter i. 

Learn the effect of coming into the presence of God (vi). 
The first effects are amazement at the glory of God, convic- 
tion of sin, and then purity and lifelong power. 

Messianic Predictions. Draw a scarlet line alongside 
of the predictions of the Messiah till they can be read or 
recited continuously. One of the most impressive sermons I 



ISAIAH, 39 



ever heard was made up of nothing but God's assertions 
about his Messiah. See vii, 14 ; ix, 6 ; xi, i ; liii, Ixi. There 
are forty references, some of them being whole chapters, 
to the future of the nations and the person of the Messiah. 
By help of the references see the exact fulfillment of the pre- 
diction concerning the Messiah in the New Testament. Isaiah's 
conceptions of Christ are as follows : '* He is a scion of David 
springing from his family. Often it had fallen into a very 
low estate, but, being also of a divine nature, shall, at first in 
holiness, proclaim the divine doctrine as a prophet filled 
with the Spirit, develop the law in truth, and render it the ani- 
mating principle of national life ; he shall as high priest by 
his vicarious suffering and death remove the guilt of his na- 
tion and of other nations, and finally rule as a mighty king, 
not only over the covenant people, but over all nations of the 
earth who will subject themselves to his peaceful scepter, not 
by violent compulsion, but by love. He will make both the 
moral and physical consequences of sin to cease. The whole 
earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord ; all 
enmity, hatred, and destruction shall be removed, even from 
the brute creation." 

The first part is directed to the whole people, and therefore 
the glory of their Messiah is dwelt upon. Hence he can 
put his kingdom, however mean and lowly now, above all 
kingdoms, however powerful. 

The second part is addressed more particularly to the 
elect, and therefore the Messiah is more represented as a 
teacher divine and a high priest. 

Righteousness is preached through the blood of the Son 
of God, w^ho bears our sorrows, sicknesses, and sins. 

Thus the Messianic revelation grows more dear to every age 
and dispensation — to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah. 
Though some seem obscure, all become clear in the light of 
fulfillment by Christ and application by him and his disciples. 

Mark your Bible. I find that I have put sixty-eight 



40 STUDIES IN 



marks, of special signification to me, into chapter Ix, in my 
own Bible. It has put a thousand into my thought ; Iv is 
as rich. It is an utter amazement that Isaiah here discerns a 
mode of salvation utterly at variance with the elaborate and 
costly sacrifices of his times. To us who always have heard 
of a free salvation it sounds natural, but to the Jews it must 
have sounded blasphemous. 

The reason why Christians who seek God daily are in 
darkness, and also the way into God's noonday, is plainly 
given (Iviii). Physicians of souls should apply God's reme- 
dies. Every man who labors for millennial glories should 
make his soul strong by chapter Ix. Gather a handful, nay, 
rather a heartful, of jewels of speech. Can a mother forget 
her sucking child ? Who are those peoples that fly as a 
cloud and as doves to their windows } Lift ye up a banner 
upon the high mountain. Awake, awake, put on thy strength, 
O Zion ; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem. 

Read chapters liii, liv, and Iv, as a continuous revelation. 
It is Christ's purchase-price for man, paid with grief and 
pain extreme ; then the priceless comfort given to the deso- 
late widowhood of his people ; then the measureless outbreak 
of blessing for the whole world. Why were these expressions, 
matchless in all other literature, written two thousand six hun- 
dred years ago .^ Eyes that have seen God can see every- 
thing afterward. 

The Object of these Prophecies. This *' was to an- 
nounce the whole great period of salvation that begins with 
the deliverance out of exile and reaches to the end of time." 
The point of time in so vast a vision is not always easily 
ascertainable. The seer may be looking backward or for- 
ward, or all things may seem present. 

ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK. 
I. Chapters i-vi. A threefold introduction. Through these 
three gates we successively enter the majestic structure. 



ISAIAH, 41 



2. Chapters vii-xxxvii. Prophecies pertaining to the 
Assyrian period, with subordinate allusions to half a dozen 
nations threatened by Assyria, the last two chapters making 
fit conclusion. 

3. Chapters xxxviii-lxvi. Prophecies pertaining to the 
Babylonian period, the first two chapters making fit intro- 
duction. 

1. A THREEFOLD INTRODUCTION (chaps, i-vi.) 

First Introduction. Chapter i. The title, verse i. The 
mournful present (2-9). 

2. Hath spoken, speaks; used thirty-five times. Inspira- 
tion asserted. 

7. Overthrown, as a Sodom of strangers. 

The means of securing a better future (10-20), not by out- 
ward sacrifices (10-15), ^^^^ ^Y repentance, obedience, charity. 
Spiritual life to be found independent of the sacrifices of 
beasts. 

11. Your sacrifices, not mine. Feigned piety is double 
iniquity. 

12. Tread, trample. 

13. Iniquity, better read, a grief to God. 
17. ReHeve, righten the oppressed. 

Second Introduction. Chapters ii-v. Israel in the 
light of future glory. This surveys the present and remotest 
future. Probably written when the whole book was compiled. 

§ I. Prophetic lamp (quoted from Micah) 2-4. 

3. The right law of God shall come from Zion, all strifes 
of the nations seeking to know this law shall be decided by it. 
Then wars cease and the making of weapons comes to an end. 

4. Rebuke, award sentences. Pruning hooks, scythes. 
The tendency of Christianity is decidedly to peace. It is to 
completely triumph. 

§ 2. Things falsely eminent to be abased (5-1 1). 

6. Forsaken, repudiated. Please, make covenant with. 

§ 3. God's judgment on things falsely eminent (12-21). 



42 STUDIES IN 



§4. Chapter iii. Judgment against godless men (22-iii, 15). 
§ 5. Judgment against godless women (i6-iv, i). 

16. Wanton, deceiving with their eyes. Mincing, trip- 
ping nicely. 

17. Discover, uncover, make naked. 

18. Cauls, networks. 

Is there any more vigorous writing in any literature 1 

§ 6. Second prophetic lamp (iv, 2-v, 30). 

Third Introduction. Chapter vi. This is unapproachably 
grand in conception and expression. Compare the puerile, 
lustful, and wicked appearances of heathen gods. All orders of 
being joined in one work after one plan. Revelation of God 
convicts of sin. Salvation means cleansing. The altar is the 
means. The call to service is divine. Angelic ministering. 

3. His glory is the fullness or completeness of the whole 
earth. 

9, 10. Cited five times in the New Testament. 

13. From utter desolation a remnant is left. Eaten, 
grazed, as a field by cattle. Seventeen hundred years have 
fulfilled this promise of persistent vitality. 
11. PART FIRST (chaps, vii-xxxix). 

I. FIRST SUBDIVISION (CHAPS. VII-XIl). 
Israel's relation to Assyria, the representative of the world-power in 
general, described in its ruinous beginning and its blessed end. 
A. — The prophetic perspective of the time of Ahaz (chaps, vii, i-ix, 6). 

1. The prophecy of Immanuel the son of a virgin (chap, vii, 

1-25). 

2. Isaiah giving the whole nation a sign by the birth of his son 

Maher-shalal-hash-baz (chap, viii, 1-4). 

3. Additions : 

a. The despisers of Shiloah shall be punished by the 

waters of the Euphrates (chap, viii, 5-8). 
h. Threatening call to those that conspire against 

Judah, and to those that fear the conspirators 

(chap, viii, 9-15). 
c. The testament of the prophet to his disciples (chaps. 

viii, i6-ix, 6). 



ISAIAH, 43 



B, — Threatening of judgment to be accomplished by Assyria, directed 

against the Israel of the Ten Tribes (chaps, ix, 7-x, 4). 
C. — Assyria's destruction Israel's salvation (chaps, x, 5-xii, 6). 

1. Woe against Assyria (chap, x, 5-19). 

2. Israel's redemption from Assyria (chap, x, 20-34). 

3. Israel's redemption in relation to the Messiah (chaps, xi, 

i-xii, 6). 

2. SECOND SUBDIVISION (CHAPS. XIII-XXVIl). 
The prophecies against foreign nations. 
A. — The discourses against individual nations (chaps, xiii-xxiii). 

1. The first prophecy against Babylon (chaps, xiii, i-xiv, 23). 

2. Prophecy against Assyria (chap, xiv, 24-27). 

3. Against Philistia (chap, xiv, 28-32). 

4. Against Moab (chaps, xv, xvi). 

5. Against and for Damascus and Ephraim (chap, xvii), 

6. Ethiopia now and then again (chap. xvii). 

7. Egypt now and then again (chaps, xix, xx). 

8. The Hbeilns emblemaiicus^ containing the second prophecy 

against Babylon, then prophecies against Edom, Arabia, 
Jerusalem, and the chamberlain Shebna (chaps, xxi, xxii). 

9. Prophecy against and for Tyre (chap, xxiii). 

B. — ThQ Jijzale of the prophecies against the nations : the libellus apoca- 
lypticus (chaps, xxiv-xxvii). 

3. THIRD SUBDIVISION (CHAPS. XXVIII-XXXIIl). 

Relation of Israel to Assyria in the time of King Hezekiah. 

4. FOURTH SUBDIVISION (CHAPS. XXXIV, XXXV). 

The finale of Part First. 

5. FIFTH SUBDIVISION (CHAPS. XXXVI-XXXIX). 

Historical pieces, containing the conclusion of the Assyrian and the 
preparation for the Babylon period. 

III. PART SECOND (chaps, xl-lxvi). 

The entire future of salvation, beginning with the redemption from 
the Babylonian exile, concluding with the creation of a new 
heaven and a new earth. 



44 STUDIES IN 



A. — Cyrus (chaps, xl-xlviii). 

1. First Discourse. The Prologue, the objective and subjec- 

tive basis of redemption (chap. xl). 

2. Second Discourse. First appearance of the Redeemer from 

the East, and of the servant of the Jehovah, and also the 
first and second use of the prophecy relating to this in 
proof of the divinity of Jehovah (chap. xli). 

3. Third Discourse. The third chief figure : The personal 

servant of Jehovah in the contrasted features of his ap- 
pearance (chap. xlii). 

4. Fourth Discourse. Redemption or salvation in its entire 

compass (chaps, xliii, i-xliv, 5). 

5. Fifth Discourse. Prophecy as a proof of divinity comes to 

the front and culminates in the name of Cyrus (chap, xliv, 
6-28). 

6. Sixth Discourse. The culminating point of the prophecy : 

Cyrus and the effect of his appearance (chap. xlv). 

7. Seventh Discotirse. The fall of the Babylonian gods, and 

the gain to Israel's knowledge of God that will be derived 
therefrom (chap. xlvi). 

8. Eighth Discourse. The well-deserved and inevitable over- 

throw of Babylon (chap, xlvii). 
g. Ninth Discourse. Recapitulation and conclusion (chap. 
xlviii). 

B. — The Personal Servant of Jehovah (chaps, xlix-lvii). 

1. First Discotirse. Parallel between the servant of Jehovah 

and Zion. Both have a small beginning and a great end 
(chap. xlix). 

2. Second Discotirse. The connection between the guilt of 

Israel and the sufferings of the sei-vant, and the liberation 
of the former through faith in the latter (chap. 1). 

3. Third Discourse. The final redemption of Israel. A dia- 

logue between the servant of Jehovah who enters as if 
veiled, Israel, Jehovah himself, and the prophet (chap. li). 

4. Fourth Discourse. The restoration of the city of Jerusalem 

(chap. Hi, 1-12). 

5. Fifth Discourse. Golgotha and Scheblimini (sit thou on viy 

right hand), (chaps. Hi, 13-liii, 12). 

6. Sixth Discourse. The new salvation (chap. liv). 

7. Seventh Discourse. The new way of appropriating salvation 

(chap. Iv). 



ISAIAH, 45 



8. Eighth Discourse. The moral, social, and physical fruits of 
the new way of salvation (chap. Ivi, 1-9). 

g. Ninth Discourse. A look at the mournful present, which 
will not, however, hinder the coming of the glorious future 
(chaps. Ivi, lO-lvii, 21). 

C. — The New Creature (chaps. Iviii-lxvi). 

1. First Discourse. Bridge from the present to the future ; 

from preaching repentance to preaching glory (chaps. 
Iviii, lix). 

2. Second Discourse. The rising of the heavenly sun of life 

upon Jerusalem, and the new personal and natural life 
conditioned thereby (chap. Ix). 

3. Third Discourse. The personal center of the revelation of 

salvation (chaps. Ixi-lxiii, 6). 

4. Fourth Discourse. The prophet in spirit puts himself in the 

place of the exiled Church and bears its cause in prayer 
before the Lord (chaps. Ixiii, 7-lxiv, 11). 

5. Fifth Discourse. The death and life-bringing end-period 

(chaps. Ixv, Ixvi). 

The above are the divisions and designations thereof by 
Lange, to which should be added hundreds of thoughts and 
notes by each student. The division of Delitzsch may be 
found in Whedon. Even so simple a thing as the Consti- 
tution of the United States, written in our day, cannot be 
certainly mastered and understood even with great study of 
contemporary documents and the commentaries of great 
expounders. 

The end of all Scripture study is to know the mind of 
God. This is not easy. The difficulties come largely from 
our inability to grasp things that are as high above our 
thoughts as the heavens are above the earth. God's thought 
in astronomy requires the labor of millennia for man to get 
glimpses of some of the first fundamentals. We have this 
world within reach. Records of its history are written in the 
rocks; but who can read them.^ Who even perfectly reads 
the records of the flowers that creatively bloom under his very 
eyes } God has embodied his plans for men in the lives of a 



46 STUDIES IN ISAIAH. 

hundred nations, and even written them out in the Bible. 
But who reads history as the outworking of the plans of God ? 
He has plainly told us our duty, and what is expected of us. 
But who a hundred and fifty years ago even faintly fancied 
that we were really to go into all the earth and disciple every 
creature? 

Prophecies have many and enlarging fulfillments. Many 
are not finally fulfilled yet. They can be understood only in 
the light of events. What wonder that we have not yet grasped 
all the thought of God } But *' Blessed is he that readeth the 
words of this book.*' The blessing is not only for him that 
understandeth, but also to him that readeth. It ministereth 
to faith, to hope of yet larger revelations, and to largeness of 
soul by associating with the infinite. A child gets more out 
of the loving effects of its teaching mother than out of the 
book. Even the angels bend as a student over a book, de- 
siring to look into these things. ** The commandment of the 
Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes, making wise the simple, 
converting the soul. . . . More to be desired than gold, yea, 
than much fine gold, and in keeping of them is great reward.** 
**Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out 
of thy law.** Amen. 



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